AXMO

AXMO (André Appel and Morten Juhl from Hamburg) approach hardstyle from the opposite direction of most of this site’s artists: they came up through big room and trance, and carry hard dance to audiences those scenes reach.

A bootleg opens doors

The duo formed in 2018 around a shared production obsession, and their breakthrough was as internet-era as it gets: a bootleg of the Backstreet Boys’ ‘I Want It That Way’ that won support from Tiësto, Ørjan Nilsen and Andrew Rayel. Chart placements followed, and the crucial connection came through W&W, the Dutch mainstage giants whose Rave Culture label signed them.

The crossover sound

AXMO’s style folds big room’s scale, trance’s euphoria and the kick-driven energy of happy hardcore and hardstyle into one festival-ready package. It is exactly the lane pioneered by acts like W&W and Timmy Trumpet (hard dance’s sounds smuggled onto the world’s biggest mainstages), and AXMO’s Spotify popularity score, among the highest of any act HDRR tracks, shows how effectively the formula travels.

Why they’re on the radar

Purists can argue where AXMO end and hardstyle begins; the release data settles it: their catalogue keeps landing in the genre’s orbit, alongside crossover-friendly acts like Da Tweekaz and the harder edges of the German festival scene. For listeners arriving from EDM, AXMO are a gateway into everything else on this site.

Every new AXMO release lands on the Hardstyle Release Radar the day it hits Spotify. The full tracked catalogue is listed above.